


The Roof's Half Gone

by Qpenguin98



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Amnesty, Confusion, Feral Behavior, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post Episode 28, TAZ Amnesty, i caught up yall, i guess, its a lot of barclay panicking about dani, u kno bc dani
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-02 11:35:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19197961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qpenguin98/pseuds/Qpenguin98
Summary: Barclay would not consider himself a fighter. If he had to choose a word to describe himself it would probably be protector, just because that’s what he does.Standing in the back of a crowd of armed people ready to wreck terrified havoc on his home planet, he watches as the white sarcophagus disappears and Dani drops out





	The Roof's Half Gone

Barclay would not consider himself a fighter. He only fights back in defense, of himself or people he cares about, and even then it can hardly be called fighting. He mostly just throws whatever’s attacking around or tries to subdue it enough to leave. If he had to choose a word to describe himself it would probably be protector, just because that’s what he does. He protects the Sylvans that come through the gate, he protects Mama even with how little she needs protecting, and he protects the town of Kepler from the abominations and the knowledge that they desperately don’t need to know.

There’s Sylvans at the Lodge that have been there since childhood, Jake and Dani being two such people. Dani’s been there since she was twelve and Jake since he was fifteen, both of them so young to have been cast out of Sylvain, and he doesn’t like to think about them getting hurt. He kind of raised them, was the most ambassador like and thus the one people met first, and they kind of latched on and so did he.

It was bad enough when Jake left the Hornets, upset and confused about his relationship with the people in it, especially Hollis, and it had taken a while for him to really come back to himself after that.

Now, standing in the back of a crowd of armed people ready to wreck terrified havoc on his home planet, he watches as the white sarcophagus disappears and Dani drops out, wrapped in a parka and looking remarkably Sylvan for the occasion.

Ned, from his spot in the front, freezes, taking in her appearance. Barclay does as well, and he realizes that the reason she doesn’t look human is because she’s not in any sort of disguise. Her eyes are glowing, face hollowed a bit, and she bares her teeth, too sharp to ignore.

He stares at her, shivering and, with dawning horror he catches on, feral in front of this group of people who would gladly shoot first and think later. Mama adjusts her gun, scanning out the rest of the crowd, and Barclay starts moving up towards her. He needs to get her back to the Lodge before something happens.

She stares out at the crowd, twitchy and hungry looking, and bolts forward, trying to get someone close to her. Ned and Barclay start running at the same time, and then a shot rings out. Ned gets her first, pulling her to the ground with him, and she tries to tear at him, to dig into his body and eat, but Barclay gets there with enough time to hoist her up and away from him. The shot, he realizes, hit Ned, but he can’t let Dani stay here to either kill or be killed, so he drags her off into the woods and hopes to god that Mama can handle that situation.

He prays that there’s still enough of Dani left in there that the spring will bring her back, but she fights him the entire time, kicking and clawing and screaming and biting at him. He’s never seen her like this and it hurts. Her voice is raw as she yells, but with he parka on she can’t seem to maneuver around him to get a good enough grip. Sure, she gets her claws in his arms quite a few times, but those are superficial, easily tended to. He doesn’t need to worry about that right now, just Dani.

Barclay hems and haws over his options as he gets closer, but ultimately he just ends up dunking her entire body into the spring when he gets there. She hisses, screaming louder as the water hits her, and he realizes that coat isn’t going to do her any favors.

“Calm down, calm down,” he whispers as he pulls the coat off her, leaving her in the t-shirt and jeans she had on under it. The water soaks through those easily and she shrieks, fight dying down as he pushes her deeper into the water, holding her down to prevent anymore mishaps.

“You’re going to be fine, you’ve just been away too long. Don’t worry, don’t worry, just drink it in, okay? Hot springs, good for you. Just like home, Dani, it’s just like home.” He keeps streaming nonsense as she stops fighting him, getting groggier and sluggish in the water. He hoists her back up under her arms and holds her upright so she doesn’t drown herself in this state and presses his forehead to the top of her head.

He doesn’t know what to do. Usually when people go feral they’re done for, but there’s no way she’s been gone long enough for that process to have solidified. He just saw her this morning, or he thought he did. He thinks back to this whole week, the shapeshifting abomination, the way she’d acted the morning after the Hornet’s Nest attack, and wonders how much of that had actually been Dani and how much had been the monster.

Dani’s murmuring nonsense, quiet words that don’t form together well, and Barclay takes in a couple deep breaths. Then the shock wave comes and blows the trees around, and he sees the mountain in the air, silhouetted by the moon it’s shrouding, covered in blue mist.

“Oh fuck,” he says quietly, and Dani squirms a bit in his arms, body tensing up. Right, other things to worry about. He’s sure Mama and Aubrey and Duck and hopefully Ned will have that handled while he takes care of what was just a feral version of one of his kids, for lack of a better word.

Things turn red and he turns away as the mountain moves back down. Not his problem right now. He’s certain it will be, but he’s still holding Dani, and until he’s certain she’s fine he’s not moving.

It’s a long bit before she moves like she’s waking up, arms coming out of the water to scrub at her face, pausing when she feels they’re wet. She opens her eyes and looks up to find Barclay still holding her, bracing himself for her to be gone again.

“Barclay?” she asks hoarsely, and he lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. His arms tighten around her a fraction and she squirms, face scrunching up, body still sluggish. “What happened?”

“How’re you feeling?” He asks instead of telling her. She doesn’t need to know right away what’s gone wrong. That can all wait. “Do you know where you are?”

“The springs,” she mumbles, moving her mouth around. “I’m still in my normal clothes, what the hell? I’m… I feel fuzzy.”

“Yeah,” he breathes out. That’s usually what people recount after going to long without Sylvain or the springs, that they feel fuzzy from the hunger. “Yeah that makes sense.”

“Can I get out?” She asks, trying to move herself. Her arms give out pretty quickly and she sinks in, held up by Barclay’s arms. “’m all wet.”

“Not yet, I don’t think. You still need some energy. Went a little off the rails there. Do you know where you’ve been?”

“It’s all fuzzy too,” she mutters, rubbing at her eyes. “It’s all bright white in my head and then it’s all black. I’ve got no clue.”

“That’s okay,” he tells her softly. “We’ll figure it out. Just rest, okay? I’m not going anywhere.”

“Did I do something?” she asks hoarsely, blinking her eyes fairly slowly. “I feel like I did something but I don’t know what.”

“Don’t worry about that right now,” Barclay tells her, and her body tenses but she doesn’t ask. “I’ll tell you later, but right now just rest, please. Got a little worried you weren’t coming back.”

“It was bad,” she whispers, looking up at him with tired eyes. Her hands clutch at his arms and he holds her just a little bit tighter. “I know it was. I can feel it. Please tell me, Barclay.”

“What you can feel is that you’re tired and you’ve had a really shitty night, Dani. I’ll tell you in the morning. I promise. We can make breakfast and talk it over and everything is going to be fine. Just rest now. Please.”

His 'please' must sound desperate enough that it gets the point across, because she doesn’t ask again, just sinks slowly back into the water. He looks warily at the mountain, at the light around it, and turns back away. Not yet. He’s not leaving yet.

“Don’t go,” Dani whispers. He looks to see her staring at the water, at both of their reflections distorted by the ripples. Her face is wet, her eyes half lidded. “Please don’t go.”

“I won’t,” he says firmly. “Just making sure everything’s okay out there.

She nods and closes her eyes. He watches as she sinks back into unconsciousness and relaxes a bit. This buys him time to figure out how to tell her what happened, how to explain that it really wasn’t her fault, but that some pretty bad things did happened just around the fact that she got kidnapped and went feral.

It’s going to be a long morning, if they even make it that long with what’s happening out there.

She shifts in her sleep and Barclay pulls her gingerly to one of the shallower sections with some sitting options, propping her upright and pulling his arms back, shaking them out. He won’t leave, he’s not going anywhere.

He’s protecting, that’s what he does. Only this feels more like his own screw up than any sort of success.

But she won’t see it like that, and he won’t see it her way, so he’ll have to compromise and go halfsies on the blame and bad feelings. He can deal. She’ll need him to be able to deal.

He stares back up at the moon, newly uncovered from the floating mountain, and sighs. It’s been a night.  Really bad night, but at least, he thinks, no one’s gone through the gate except Aubrey. That he knows of. And he’s gonna keep his knowledge like that until all of this with Dani is done.

Barclay isn’t moving, isn’t prepared to move at all until Dani wakes back up. He’ll be here, right next to her until the morning, and he’ll stay next to her after while he explains all the terrible shit that’s happened in the time she’s been away, and even after that when she’s blaming herself to hard to think straight. He’ll stay right beside her through it all.

It’s what he does, after all.

 

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i've been putting off listening to the two newest amnesty episodes since ep 26 just because the whole scenario stressed me all the way out, but man am i glad that i listened. I'm so ready for ep. 29 tomorrow and i hope yall are to. This came to me when griffin described Barclay holding Dani in the water in the whole mountain scene and i had to do it  
> hope you enjoy and please comment!


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